Messages

I would advice you to use a real font for the poster and not a handdrawn one. Mostly because real posters are seldom drawn by hand. Otherwise, it's starting to shape up.

What you have done here is basically the design for an inefficient nuclear reactor. Normal reactors work on this principle but the heat is strong enough to vaporize the water into steam. In this case I think the output would be to low for it to be worthwhile.

I'd say script it, rather than making it a feature, the script isn't that hard anyway. To tidy stuff up and make scripting easier just do it in Global Script, with an array taking the room number as parameter to hold the song positions, it shouldn't be hard.

Better yet, make a module out of it and distribute!!

- for some unknown reason it is necessary to switch the mouse cursor into "use" before you can select an inventory item

It's actually meant to be like that. This is because you might want to "Look" at something in your inventory, or maybe later to "Eat" something. That's why you need to "Use" the inventory items to select them. If you can think of a better solution then I'm all ears!

- in the opening menu when you click away from the floating buttons, the cursor changes from crosshair to a "look" icon

Yes, this is a stupid bug that has been fixed after the release of the demo.

- at times I would notice by your English that you are not a native speaker (neither am I), with some misspells and a few strange-sounding expressions. But it's nothing serious and didn't spoil my gameplay.

I'm doing my best here! For Frank 2 I got a lot of help from my great native english beta-testers which hopefully corrected most of the grammar mistakes and strange expressions in that game. I hope to get the same help with Woodlands!

- it might be just me, but I didn't like the Growling sprite, it just didn't look as good as the other characters

That's too bad. What didn't you like about him? Was it the style, or was he badly drawn?

- the scene where Tom confronts the wizard would really benefit from some dramatic/evil music

That's the plan, but the music wasn't ready when I released the demo. (It's still not ready, but it will be there in the end)

- there aren't actually any puzzles in the demo. I hope to see some good puzzles in the full game!

You are right that there aren't any real challenges in the demo. That's because it is merely the introduction of the game, and it is meant mostly to present the story and the characters. The puzzles appear shortly afterwards. You WON'T be disappointed!

I love the charming and original graphics, and the fairy-tale story. I got instantly swallowed-up by the game's amazing atmosphere. Please make the full game stand up to this demo, and I'm sure it will be one of the best AGS games made so far!

I bow in honour, and instantly continue making the game...

Thanks for the feedback!!

Everything looks and sounds great!

But... Please tell me the English we see and hear in the game will be better than it is in your posts.

Assuming the amount of text is proportional to the quality graphics and storyline you have,
then you will probably need a team of proof-readers.

Of course, if you only have speech...

gUd LuK sowndz thuh saam

I think he has a whole forum of willing proof readers, so it's not that big an issue.

My God! Those FMV-shots are in class with (or even better than) Square's final fantasy FMV:s! Fucking STUNNING!

Not to complain, but I'd REALLY like to see an INGAME screenshot with a character in it. That would be so awesome!

Of course you should, but who remembers it?

I know many languages support explicit translation of the types, but it makes sense only to experienced programmers who are familiar with how the values are to be treated in different cases. For AGS the story is a bit difference, the text script is just a scripting language not a full programming environment, I think currently it can only distinguish between integer operations and decimal operations by how the variables look like.

I can buy that. I rest my case.

Thanks for telling me!

It works fine now. Please download (and tell me what you thought about it)

Yes I know you can do that, but consider this (because I do this all the time):

function moveSomething(Object* o, float speed);

...
...
moveSomething(oThing, 4);

This will give an error obviously, but is something I type all the time. Ok, I know you could and SHOULD do an explicit type conversion, but there IS a reason for most programming languages to implement implicit type conversions of this type and it's because people tend to view 4 equal to 4.0. In fact mathematically integers ARE a subset of floats so it makes sense.

Anyway, if it's too much hassle then don't do it, CJ. I know you might have more important things to fix. But think about it at least.

[string]

And AGS can return any of the types built into it (except managed types (it can return pointers to these types)), and it is logically best to do so instead of using the word function (for the same reasons as the above).Ã,  Furthermore, returning old-style strings isn't technically "supported", although there are several documented cases of it working (returning new-style Strings is supported).

So you don't have to specify that it's a function in AGS? Just the return value like in Java/C? Didn't know that...

I know it is possible already to explicitly convert ints to floats with the IntToFloat command, but in most languages this particular conversion is handled implicitly.

Ex:
float nbr = 4; //interpreted as float nbr = 4.0;

This would be really useful to make the code look less cluttered. I mean what looks best:

float nbr = IntToFloat(4)
or
float nbr = 4;

The answer is obvious. So if you have time, CJ, I hope you can implement this!

Update!!

2006-04-12:
Well, my exams are over and now I've started doing my diploma project (in "Lattice mismatched epitaxy" (nanoscience for those who don't have a clue what the previous statement means) ).

But I'm also working on the game of course. Lately I've done some dialogs, implemented a few puzzles and drawn a completely new scene and a new character. See the screenshot below.

The scene is by the Woodland stream, a river that divides the Woodlands in two. There's a little furry creature that lives in the dead tree, who collects all kinds of shiny things for his collection.
I
'm still striving to complete the first day as soon as I can, but I still have a few more animations to do. I'm thinking about releasing the first day as a demo, but I haven't decided yet.



Go to http://www.fovmester.se for news and info

function attack_success(int chance_of_hit) {
  if (Random(99)<chance_of_hit) return true;
  else return false;
}

Seems like you're doing the same thing twice here.
Better:

Code: ags

function attack_success(int chance_of_hit) {
  return Random(99)<chance_of_hit;
}

Whoa, that a hell lot of code!

I use v 2.71 of AGS and first I had used Label.SetText but now I switched to Label.Text = ...

It's the same result. And I double-checked the nbr of characters and according to the word count in MS Word it's 195 character. So it is still < 200. Here's the text anyways:

Known by it's large leaves, the thief salvae is a brownish plant. The name comes from its dousing abilities commonly used by thieves. It grows in dark places, often inside caves or under bridges.

Here's the whole Book-code which handles everything concerning the books. I also added a check to see if it was really the text above and nothing else that was put in the label. And it was. I don't understand why I get an error! Shouldn't it truncate the text like you said, monkey?

Code: ags

// Main script for module 'Book'


#define BOOKSIZE 10
#define MAX_NBR_OF_BOOKS 10

struct BookContent {
  String title[BOOKSIZE];
	String text[BOOKSIZE];
	int nbrOfPages;
	bool read;
};

BookContent books [MAX_NBR_OF_BOOKS];
int currentBook;
int currentPage = 0;

static function Book::addPage(int bookNbr, String title, String text) {
    int pageNbr = books[bookNbr].nbrOfPages;
    books[bookNbr].title[pageNbr] = title;
		books[bookNbr].text[pageNbr] = text;
		books[bookNbr].read = false; // cannot have read whole book anymore		
		books[bookNbr].nbrOfPages++;
}

// Shows the BOOK gui and handles reading through the book
static function Book::readBook(int bookNbr) {
  gBook.Centre();
  currentBook = bookNbr;
  books[bookNbr].read = true;
  
  gcLTitle.SetText(books[bookNbr].title[0]);
  gcRTitle.SetText(books[bookNbr].title[1]);
  gcLPage.SetText(books[bookNbr].text[0]);
  gcRPage.SetText(books[bookNbr].text[1]);
  gcLNbr.SetText("1");
	gcRNbr.SetText("2");
  gBook.Visible = true;
}

static function Book::getCurrentBook() {
  return currentBook;
}

static function Book::getNbrOfPages(int bookNbr) {
		return books[bookNbr].nbrOfPages;
}


// Called when clicking on the turn page buttons or the close book button.
static function Book::interface_click(int interface, int button) {
		if (interface == BOOK) {
			int bNbr = currentBook;
			String p1;
			String p2;
			String t1;
			String t2;
			
			if (button == 2 && currentPage > 0) //turning to a lower page
				currentPage-=2;
			if (button == 3 && currentPage < Book.getNbrOfPages(bNbr)-2) //turning to a higher page
			  currentPage+=2;
			  
			if (button == 2 || button == 3) {//turning the page
				 
				   
				   t1 = books[bNbr].title[currentPage];
				   p1 = books[bNbr].text[currentPage];
				   t2 = books[bNbr].title[currentPage+1];
				   p2 = books[bNbr].text[currentPage+1];
				   
				   //checking if the text in p1 really is what I think it is.
					 Overlay* i = Overlay.CreateTextual(0, 30, 300, 0, 65472, p1);
					 WaitMouseKey(4000);
					 i.Remove();
					 
			     gcLPage.Text = p1; //HERE COMES THE EXCEPTION
			     gcRPage.Text = p2;
			     gcLTitle.Text = t1;
			     gcRTitle.Text = t2;
						   		  
		  } else if (button == 4) { //quit button
		    currentPage = 0; //resets page
		    gBook.Visible = false;
		  }
		
			gcLNbr.SetText(String.Format("%d",currentPage+1));
			gcRNbr.SetText(String.Format("%d",currentPage+2));			
		}
		
}

I'm using a gui to be a book in my game, where the text of the pages are a label. When turning the page I simply exchange the label text with another text from a big array. But when I run the game and turn the page I get this exception:

Error: SetLabelText: text too long

The text I tried to insert into the label was 192 characters long. It covers about half the page, which is also about half the size of the label.

I tried typing the same text into the label from the editor and it showed up fine in the editor, covering about half the page as expected.

Now, why then do I get this error when I use Label.SetText? I guess Label uses an array of characters (or maybe std::string?) to save the characters, and so it shouldn't be a limit put by storage space. I guess the limit is something that CJ has decided then, and if it's not too difficult, then please CJ, remove this limitation, because as far as I see it makes no sense and it would make my book work without having to do a lot of ugly workarounds.

What an idea!  I love it. It reminds me of my dad's old monochrome computer screen.

About the screenshot above: I think at some dark places, where the light can't go, there must be much darker than it's now. Especially where the creature stands. Well except his eyes. You know, Tom enters this place and see only those big eyes, starring at him. A little bit later and he can see better in the dark (i.e. getting brighter like it's in the picture maybe). About the door: it's too bright there, but I don't know. Maybe it's some effect you've searched for. Bottom down in the screen looks a little empty. Maybe you can add some more static items (like bags, shovels, gloves, spider nets, garbadge, wooden boxes etc.).

Some good points here. Maybe the scene is still too bright even though I tried to make it dark. But I don't know about adding more things in the foreground. Some of the things you mentioned would be good solutions to some of the puzzles, and so I don't want them in there.

You say that the door is too bright. Well that is an effect I WAS looking for. I thought it was effectful actually.

But thanks for the help. The more people who say their meaning, the better the end result!

Yes, I dunno where that picture is anymore either. But I put together a new comparison for you.

Here it is:



And Mats, don't be ashamed. I didn't remember that we already have had the Bombadill discussion either.

Yeah, I agree with buloght. It sort of reminds of Apprentice.

Is it just me or does this dow look very different compaired with the other dow screenshot? I don't just mean the color but the shape of it.

By the way, I've been thinking about this thought: Does the main-character called Tom as a in-joke for Tom Bombadill from the Lord of the Rings? I mean he is a creature from the woods and his name is Tom.

Thanks all of you!

I changed the colors of the dows from pink to this more redbrownish color. That's why it doesn't match the previous pic. The shape however... dunno. The perspective is different. Maybe that's it. I tried to keep the same shape. Maybe I failed? Help, anyone?

About Tom's name: I never thought about that really. It's actually quite weird, because for a long time I trying to draw the main character for the game and didn't have a name for him. Then when I finally came up with this version the name just popped up in my head. And I just couldn't change it. He was just Tom. That WAS his name. Weird...